kablamfandomcom-20200215-history
KaBlam!
"We crammed more cartoons into a half hour than anyone else." -Chris Viscardi, co-creator of'' KaBlam!'' "That was our promise, right?" -Will McRobb, co-creator of KaBlam! KaBlam! (stylized as KaBLaM!) is an American animated sketch comedy that originally ran on Nickelodeon from 1996 to 2000, created by Robert Mittenthal, Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi. It features a collection of short films in several different styles of animation, bridged by the characters Henry and June, who introduce the shorts and have adventures of their own in between. Although SNICK (Saturday Night Nickelodeon) aired many Nicktoons not part of its block, KaBlam! was the only Nicktoon created for SNICK. The show became TV-Y in 1997 (when the American content ratings were put to use), until later that year when it became TV-Y7. Production The segment creators include David Fain, Tim Hill, Stephen Holman, Emily Hubley, Mark Marek, Michael Pearstein, Mo Willems, and Cote Zellers. The theme song and all of the original background music on the show was provided by the Moon Ska Stompers, a band composed of King Django, Victor Rice, and members of The Toasters and The New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble. The bulk of the soundtrack was 30-second instrumental clips of songs from The Toasters' album D.L.T.B.G.Y.D. ''(''Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down), while the theme song itself is a differently recorded version of the Toasters song "2-Tone Army". Tracks from the Associated Production Music library heard in The Ren and Stimpy Show as well as Spongebob Squarepants were also utilized. KaBlam! was the first show to be spun off of All That. It was pitched to Nickelodeon in 1994 and aired two years later. Some of its shorts were originally stand-alone shorts during Nickelodeon commercial breaks. The pilot episode, "Your Real Best Friend", was created in 1995 and finished in 1996. In 1996, The Off-Beats, one of the many shorts on the show, was released on a Rugrats videotape entitled "Tommy Troubles." The show began production in 1996 and premiered October 11. The show ran for four seasons. The last episode was broadcast on May 27, 2000. Reruns continued to show on Nickelodeon until 2001. In 2002, Nicktoons was launched, and the channel began airing reruns of the program, though not all episodes were aired. During commercial breaks, various shorts from the show would play, not including any shorts involving Henry and June or music videos. In August 2005, Nicktoons changed its appearance and schedule, and canceled many shows in the process, including KaBlam!. The program hasn't been shown on the network since then, not even when Nick had a marathon of the first episodes of each Nicktoon on Thanksgiving Day 2007, despite having Henry and June on the cover of the now-defunct Nickelodeon Magazine. A French-dubbed version has been broadcast in France on television channel GameOne (see Télévision Par Satellite), and other versions of the show are on other Nickelodeon channels around Europe. It also was shown in the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2000, and in Poland from 1999 to 2002. The show played on YTV in Canada. Regular Shorts * Henry and June Henry and June are the animated hosts of KaBlam! who turn the pages of a comic book (changes with each episode) to reveal the next cartoon, as well as being involved in subplots of their own between the shorts. * Action League Now! This short ran for all four seasons of KaBlam!. Filmed in "Chuckimation", in which the characters/props are moved by unseen hands or thrown from off-camera (interspersed with occasional stop motion animation). Action League Now! featured a group of superheroes, played by custom-made action figures, who fight crime in suburbia despite being total idiots. The four superheroes are The Flesh, Thundergirl, Stinky Diver, and Meltman. Considered to be the most successful KaBlam! short, it briefly became a spin-off series in 2001. Action League Now! is the only short to have a new episode with every showing of KaBlam!. All of the characters on the shorts were voiced by personalities from radio station WDVE in Pittsburgh. * Sniz and Fondue This short ran for the first three seasons of KaBlam!. A pair of ferret roommates who often get on each other's nerves. Twelve-year-old Sniz is the younger kid ferret that is very hyperactive, and quite a troublemaker of the two, while thirteen-year-old Fondue is the older teenage ferret, who is the nervous, yet intelligent one. There is also Snuppa and Bianca, Sniz and Fondue's roommates. * Life with Loopy This short ran for all four seasons of KaBlam!. The life of twelve-year-old Larry and his strange experiences with his imaginative and adventurous younger sister, Loopy. The characters were animated with stop-motion puppet bodies, but their heads were created with cardboard. The show was created by Stephen Holman. * Prometheus and Bob This short ran for all four seasons of KaBlam!. A claymation/stop motion segment featuring the camera-recorded mission logs of Prometheus, an alien who comes to Earth attempting to teach a caveman, Bob, everyday things. From the use of fire to the act of ice skating, the result is usually a failure by the mischievous third cast member, who was a simple monkey. The introduction, done in a mock government file format, describes the events as having occurred "900,000 years ago". * The Off-Beats This short ran for the first two seasons of KaBlam!. A group of unpopular friends who deal with constant problems, many caused by their main rivals, a popular clique known as "The Populars." The short was the first of the regular shorts to end most likely due to Mo Willems going over to Cartoon Network to work on Sheep in the Big City and write episodes for Codename: Kids Next Door. Other Shorts * Surprising Shorts The only short segment not to have recurring characters, these shorts usually had nothing to do with any previous shorts included on the show. This segment was introduced in Season 1 (and once in Season 2) by June pulling down Henry's pants, revealing his unflattering and garishly colored boxer shorts, hence the name. In Seasons 2-4, they are revealed like any other cartoon on the show. Shorts in this segment included Lava ''and ''Anemia and Iodine. * Angela Anaconda A cutout-photo cartoon that was later spun off into its own series on the Fox Family Channel and was briefly rerun on Nickelodeon, in the United States. It is about a girl named Angela, who is a social outcast. She finds herself unpopular in school and always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nanette, a fake-French girl who everyone loves and wants to be, always mocks Angela. During each episode, a poem-like story is narrated by Angela. She often gets her revenge on the antagonist of that particular episode, and more often imagines her revenge on said antagonist in a highly exaggerated manner. Due to copyrights being held with Fox, the KaBlam! episodes featuring her shorts were not allowed to air on Nicktoons. * JetCat This short ran on the last two seasons of KaBlam!. ''An animation segment created by Jay Stephens about a girl who has an identity as a cat superhero and flies around and saves her city. She says she "flies like a jet and fights like a cat." This is the only short that takes place outside of the comic book and it was featured as a comic in ''Nickelodeon Magazine for a short time. The music was composed by Rocko's Modern Life composer Pat Irwin. * Race Rabbit A live-action show created by Scott Fellows (who later worked on the Nickelodeon show Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide) about a romantic rabbit racer with an English accent named Race Rabbit who competes in races but there is usually trouble along the way caused by the Boolies (Zit and Winston), who are his human enemies. Race Rabbit always wins the race, foiling the Boolies' plans along the way. It is the only KaBlam! short created in the United Kingdom. Episodes Main article: List of KaBlam! episodes Season 1 started off with regular cartoons in their regular order. Sniz & Fondue, Action League Now!, Prometheus and Bob, and Life with Loopy. The Off-Beats was also another regular cartoon that occasionally filled in for Life with Loopy. Other cartoon segments such as Surprising Shorts, Angela Anaconda, and The Louie and Louie Show aired. The opening theme to the show starts out with a hawk crashing into the camera while the camera pans through a forest, goes underwater and travels to Egypt where Egyptians dance and the Great Sphinx swipes at the camera. The camera heads up to space where two kids in a ride, the planets, stars, asteroids, and UFOs are seen. After the United States Capitol gets destroyed by two UFOs, it then pans to Godzilla destroying a city. It then pans to an open street comic book store and lands on the KaBlam! comic book, featuring the Flesh, Stinky Diver, Sniz, Fondue, and Loopy on it. The book is then opened by Henry and June. After they dance, the episode starts. At the start of the theme, a voiceover of a man shouts "Wake up the masses!". As soon as he finishes, another man (the narrator, Bert Pence) continues by saying, "Assume the crash position. Hold on tight, take a deep breath, for a new kind of cartoon show. It's KaBlam!, where cartoons and comics collide. Now to take you inside and turn the pages, here are your hosts, Henry and June." The ending theme to the show is a quirky, upbeat tune similar to The Toasters song "Skaternity". In Season 2, after 7 more episodes of The Off-Beats, and one last episode of Surprising Shorts, they were officially taken out of KaBlam!. One-time shorts were brought in such as Randall Flan's Incredible Big Top, and The Girl with Her Head Coming Off ''by Emily Hubley. ''The Brothers Tiki appeared twice in Season 2. Henry and June are now drawn differently (cel-shaded/CGI) and their voices are deeper. The opening theme to the show is barely changed. When the camera pans on the KaBlam! comic book, the cover is different from Season 1. Thundergirl, Stinky Diver, Prometheus, Bob, Loopy, Sniz, and Fondue are seen. Also, Henry and June dance the macarena and then arm-in-arm, whereas in Season 1 it was just a bunch of random dances. The ending theme to the show is changed, although still upbeat (it is similar to The Toasters' song "Everything You Said Has Been A Lie"). Many instruments are heard, along with a drum beat. In Season 3, after 4 more episodes of Sniz and Fondue, its production company began working on a TV adaption of Watership Down, ending its run on KaBlam!. Jetcat and Race Rabbit are introduced and become minor shorts that appeared from time to time. The Adventures of Patchhead makes its final appearance. A music video for a song by James Kochalka called "Hockey Monkey" also appears once. Henry and June are drawn a little differently and their voices are slightly deeper. The opening theme is shortened and Henry and June have their own main plots now. The opening theme had a number of changes. After the camera comes up out of the water, it goes directly to the White House scene. After the Godzilla scene, the camera pans toward a school instead of the comic book stand. The camera scares a bird off that is perched on a window as it enters a classroom. It pans by a teacher and through a number of students. It stops as it hits a student reading a KaBlam! comic book. On the cover of the comic book, it shows a child who is ecstatic. Henry and June then open the comic book, dance, and the episode starts. Announcer Bert Pence's line, as he introduces the show, is slightly changed. Instead of saying "Hold on tight, take a deep breath for a new kind of cartoon show", he says "Hold on tight, take a deep breath for a cartoon cramaganza!" The ending theme is not changed. This was also intended to be the final season, until Nickelodeon renewed the show. In Season 4, all the shorts (except Action League Now! which spun off into its own show) come to an end in the final season. Life with Loopy and Prometheus and Bob air their last 7 episodes while Jetcat and Race Rabbit air their last 1 and 2 episodes, respectively. Music videos by They Might Be Giants appear twice; they were "Why Does the Sun Shine?" and "Doctor Worm". One-time cartoons appear: Fuzzball, Garbage Boy, Emmett Freedy, Stewy the Dogboy, The Little Freaks, and The Shizzagee. The opening theme is not changed, along with the ending theme. The rest of Season 4 and two unaired seasons were not seen due to the show's sudden cancellation.